Thursday, May 07, 2009

Yipee, at last, finally vegetarian sweets! - well actually vegetarians/vegans have had sweets for years and companies such as Just Wholefoods have madeVegeBears and even won awards for their efforts.

The trouble is they are usually only sold in health food stores as Haribo have a strangle-hold on everywhere else.

So! great news that Haribo have veganised their sweets and we can now buy vegetarian confectionery EVERYWHERE.

But do we really want vegetarian kids to eat more sweets? It was a great get out clause for parents - "oh no, sorry darling you can't eat that crap because it's got little piggies testicles, toes and ears in it and probably a little bit of it's anus too"

Now they've taken out the nasty stuff what do we do? We can't LIE, it's not PC to say "No darling, my little vegan pumpkin, you can't eat that crap because you'll end up fat and ugly like the poor kids on the bus", we could I guess threaten them with the dentist but we've spent years nuturing a good relationship with the dentist and avoiding passing on hereditry irrational fear. What the **** do we do? Not sure "have a satsuma instead" is going to cut it. Do we be economical with the truth and keep the news from them? It's only going to take one naive well meaning mum to say "don't worry little odd child, they've changed the recipe you don't have to be an alien any more you can be like all the other spotty, grossly overweight and snotty children"

Then we'd be caught out and our children would never believe a word we said, ever again - oooh - like normal kids then.

It's taken Neville Finlay 3 years to get these Halal sweets to mass market I guess we should be greatful . Personally I wish he'd stuck to vegan Caviar!

I can confirm that there are 4 varieties of this range which are completely Vegan and 4 which are Vegetarian. The difference comes with the coating on the outside of the sweet. The 4 Vegan types are - Cola Breeze, Mega Sour, Sour Delicous, & Sour Tongues. These have a sugar coating which eliminates the need for beeswax.The other 4 types - Tropical Fruit, Gummy Bears, Zoo & Wummis have no sugar coating and as such Beeswax is required to prevent sticking.

I hope this helps, if you have any other queries please do not hesitate to let me know.

It worries me that in our earnest efforts to allow our kids to live a 'normal' life with vegetarian alternatives to everything that 'normal' kids eat that we risk losing site of an alarming scientific well researched fact.